Cheever tries to deconstruct what undoes us all—herself included

What if Romeo and Juliet, Anna and Vronsky, or Catherine and Heath­cliff weren't lost in the grip of ­operatic passions but were just jonesing for a dopa­mine spike? So suggests Susan Cheever in her new book, Desire: Where Sex Meets ­Addiction (Simon & Schuster), in which she diag­noses an affliction she feels is ­largely unrecognized due to our culture's ideal­ization of romantic love and our ever more casual attitudes toward sex and marriage.

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Instead of defining her terms in any clear way—­admittedly difficult given the hazy nature of all addiction, but arguably the job of anyone who takes on this task—Cheever, who previously chronicled her struggle with alcoholism, focuses on how sex addiction tracks with other addictive behaviors, such as binge drinking or compulsive shopping. The ­salient difference is that "in sex and love addiction, the substance is other people," which obviously introduces certain moral considerations.

Cheever's macro approach makes some sense, given that, as she notes, addictions tend to travel in packs and brain scans of subjects in love resemble those of addicts using drugs. Sadly, Desire, which is mostly devoted to Cheever meeting, eating with, and quoting various experts, fails to move beyond the obvious: "The most recognized symptom of addiction is that it causes us to do things we wish we didn't do."

Glaringly absent here is any serious ­examination of Cheever's ­adventures in (self-admitted) pathological promiscuity. ­Encounters with her mother's oncologist, with a man who wore too much of a ­cologne called Canoe, with "moving men, doctors, ­lawyers, book salesmen" are revisited but not ­explored. "The shame attached to this subject surrounds it like a thick, stinky fog," she writes. Perhaps her own authorial vision was obscured by it.